Appropriate action is never planned. It comes about when a situation poses a burning question, and an urgent answer is needed.
Appropriate action is like saving a child from out a house on fire — at that moment reflection subsides, thoughts are eliminated and pushed to the background, and action follows immediately and adequately.
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When a situation is truly seen, entirely without any intellectual, rational, or emotional background interfering — then action, if action is needed, becomes appropriate action. It becomes an action of the hearth, of our whole being, rooted in non-duality.
Nevertheless, most of our actions come about very different. We’ve been taught that every situation is a question that needs an answer. Everything is a “problem” needed “to be solved.” We learn that we need to do, but we don’t realize that most situations are an answer already not needing any additions to it.
When we act on a perfect answer already given, only confusion can arise. That’s not appropriate action. That’s action that will only raise more and unnecessary questions on an answer already supplied.
To understand when action is needed is not an intellectual endeavor. It has nothing to do with making “a decision.” It’s seeing a situation clearly without anything coming in that judges that situation. There’s no mental separation there between the observer and the observed, but just observing as a non-dual phenomenon.
Then, it will show that if action is needed, action will arise, appropriate action, despite of us. And that’s total freedom — freedom from our background, from our contradictory thoughts, from our ever-changing concepts, and fears.
Appropriate action is not the freedom to do what you like or think what must be done, but the freedom to do what is needed, or even — to not do anything at all.
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